


Till Human Voices Wake Us

by straightforwardly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (Not) Dealing With Past Trauma, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, F/M, Not Fluff, Parseltongue, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 11:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9606323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: HBP. Ginny falls in love again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AFTanith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFTanith/gifts).



The sun shone bright and unseasonably warm, a final, belated gasp of summer before winter truly set in. After classes ended for the day, Ginny found herself heading straight outside. It was far too fine a day to spend studying in the library, regardless of how much homework all of her professors had assigned in response to their upcoming OWLs. 

Some of her fellow classmates had given into the competing demands of the weather and their mountains of schoolwork with a compromise. Students lay scattered with their books and notes in pockets around the lakeside. She’d been invited to join in, but she’d rejected them. To be sedentary on such a day, when she didn’t know when she would next be able to go outside so uninhibited— she couldn’t bear the thought. 

She would have taken her broom for some flying, but Hufflepuff had commandeered the Quidditch pitch for training. So instead she wandered without real purpose, soaking in the feel of the late afternoon sun. 

The number of students about began to die down as she passed the shores of the lake and followed the curve of the castle, until there was no one at all. It was an odd feeling, when she first noticed it. She hadn’t spent much time by herself the past four years; always, there seemed to be at some people around her. Dormmates, classmates, family, _someone_. 

It had started from need; later, it’d simply become the way of things. 

The world seemed very quiet, with nothing around her but the hiss of the breeze and the soft sound of the grass absorbing her footsteps. Ginny turned the corner behind the first of the greenhouses along the way, and came to a halt. 

There, not more than a few meters away, knelt Harry, his head bent to a patch of bushy overgrowth. He hadn’t noticed her. 

_What is he—_

But before Ginny even managed to finish the thought, she saw it: a small, black, angular head lifting from the dirt, the flickering of a forked tongue — and Harry’s reply, a soft hiss that had nothing to do with the wind.

_“Kill them. Kill the mudbloods,” she hisses, or he does. He fills her up; her mouth moves at his command, forming sounds she’s never known to make and cannot understand, or wouldn’t, had he not had her ears too, and her mind, and all of her._

_He doesn’t even allow her to shiver, or whimper. He is every part of her; her body belongs more to him than it does to herself._

_Tom—_

Ginny slammed herself against the wall on the opposite corner, out of sight. Her heart pounded wildly, like it did when she dove to catch the Quaffle, the wind whipping madly at her hair, and knew, _knew_ the exact way it would fall into her grasp. 

Beyond it, she could still hear the sound of a human voice turned to a smooth, sibilant hiss. 

The sun beat down hot against her skin. She rarely thought of Tom on warm days. From that first summer, after, being outside, in the sun had always pushed the memories of him away. He was dark corners, hiding behind her bed-curtains with her diary in hand, the constant chill of the dungeon and the deeper depths of Hogwarts below. He was trembling in her own bed, delight blooming in her chest as she read his words, was being awake and yet so far away from her own body that she couldn’t even feel the touch of scales against her hands, was being all alone in the corridors and not knowing why. He was guilt, and desire. 

He had nothing to do with human voices or the sun. 

And yet, here he was. She shivered, her cheeks flushed. And still Harry spoke from somewhere behind her, utterly unaware, his mouth forming syllables she could no longer understand. And his voice was Tom’s voice, or near enough, and maybe if she pulled him down to kiss her his lips would be Tom’s lips, hissing snake-secrets into her mouth. 

She shivered again, more violently this time, and closed her eyes, and listened.

**Author's Note:**

>  _The rest of the term passed **in a haze of blazing sunshine**. Hogwarts was back to normal with only a few small differences ... On the other hand, **Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again**._  
>  — Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets


End file.
